(Clearwisdom.net)

1. University Student Expelled for His Practice of Falun Gong Exposes the Persecution He Faced in Beijing's Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp (Part 1)

http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/2/19/45270p.html

By Chinese practitioner Gong Chengxi

[Editor's note: Mr. Gong Chengxi, 25, was a former undergraduate student in his senior year, majoring in Administration and Management at the Changping College of the Beijing Politics and Law University. He was from Urumqi, Xinjiang Province. He had been an outstanding student at school who excelled both in academics and personal conduct. He was elected the student association president and the class leader. The school expelled him after the persecution started.]

Gong Chengxi was sent for detention to the infamous Tuanhe Labor Camp in Beijing around the end of 2000 when he was distributing truth-clarifying pamphlets in Beijing. He was sent to brainwashing sessions twice under the persecution, with one of them lasting for more than 10 months. During the two-year-long detention, the guards attempted to force him to give up his faith by using various forms of torture, such as forced standing, squatting, electric shock baton, forced-feeding and deprivation of sleep. He did not waiver once even though he was one of the focal targets for brainwashing and transformation, he received an unimaginable amount of torture both physically and mentally. He was one of the most determined Dafa practitioners at the Tuanhe Labor Camp.

Gong Chengxi walked out of the Tuanhe Labor Camp with dignity in 2003. Unfortunately, he was falsely arrested again in August 2003 and his whereabouts are not known at this time.

*******

I had been quite weak and feeble ever since I was young, and I got sick quite often. I had suffered miserably in health and endured the anguish of being hopeless. I started to practice Falun Dafa in 1998. A miracle happened after about half a month of practice. The pain in my body subsided. My whole body felt like it was being transformed from the innermost part of my soul. Gradually my body became healthy, and my outlook became bright. My whole mental and physical condition improved greatly as I followed the principles of "Truth, Compassion, Forbearance" for my personal conduct. My teachers, classmates, friends and relatives all commended me for my improvement.

Yet, after practitioners' peaceful appeal on April 25^th, 1999, I received warnings from the school that I must not introduce Falun Gong to others or I will be dismissed from my position as the class leader. I would have to choose between practicing and school. This caused a lot of undue hardship in my studies and my life.

After July 20^th, 1999, the Jiang regime passed down an order to persecution Falun Gong practitioners by the strategy of "ruining [Falun Gong practitioners'] reputations, cut them off financially, and destroy them physically." Countless Falun Gong practitioners were facing a dire crisis in their existence. Unaccountable numbers of innocent families were broken up.

After the summer of 1999, the university's Communist Youth League Committee asked my parents to come to Beijing from Xinjiang, and threatened them with my dismissal from the school in order to have their cooperation in forcing me to abandon my practice of Falun Gong. Faced with such unwarranted and unfair persecution, I had no choice but to go to Beijing to appeal.

I was seized by plainclothes police on my way to the government office in October 1999 and was taken to the Tiananman police station. In the interrogation cell the police forcefully cuffed my hands behind my back and forced me to squat down. They also savagely beat my buttocks with rubber batons. I sweated profusely under the severe pain and the handcuffs bit into my wrist. That evening the school took me back. The Party and League committee applied a great deal of pressure to prevent me from further appeals. In order to clarify the truth about Falun Gong to the government, I was forced to leave home. I returned back to school after a month but was dismissed from school for one year of probation, and my father took me home to Xinjiang.

Due to the nationwide persecution of Falun Gong instigated by the Jiang regime, even Falun Gong practitioners in my hometown were also sent to labor camps. Their phones were being monitored. Everyone had to show his or her solidarity and conformance with the government. Practitioner's relatives were also implicated. My own relatives were in fear too, so they sent me to another relative's home in a remote village. However, even there the police were arresting practitioners. My relatives were constantly living in fright.

On July 22, 2000, I again went to Tiananman Square to peacefully appeal for Falun Gong. I was dragged and beaten by the police and then they shoved me into the squad car. They continued to pull my hair and tortured me in the squad car. Later, close to one hundred Falun Gong practitioners and myself were taken to another police station, where we were forced to get our photos taken and finger printed. I was detained for 48 hours without any due legal process. I was forced to stand for several hours until I was about to faint. That evening I was thrown into a small cell without a bed. The police prohibited me from practicing the Falun Gong exercises or going to sleep, otherwise they would savagely beat me again.

My parents sent me back to school in September 2000 at the end of the one-year school probation. Yet the school did not allow me to resume my studies because I wrote, "peaceful appeal for Falun Gong is not a criminal act" on my application form to resume my courses. This brought forth another round of beating by my father.

In October 2000, I accompanied my parents to tour Tiananmen Square. Before we could go up to Tiananman gate tower, the police forced my parents to curse Falun Gong before permitting us to enter the gate tower.

On December 20, 2000, I was spotted while distributing Falun Gong truth-clarifying pamphlets at a branch college of the Beijing University. About 7 to 8 security personnel beat me up in front of a group of people and then sent me to the detention center at the Changping police station in Beijing. In the first two days of detention, one of my legs was badly beaten by inmates and became swollen. I could not walk normally for an entire month. Another practitioner in the same cell was often stripped of his clothes, and several degenerated inmates took pleasure in forcing a toothbrush into his anus. The inmates often used other degenerate and dissolute means to torture and humiliate him.

While I was there, they forced me to sit on hard board for a long period of time during the day. In the evening I could not sleep because I was so cold. I could not even take a bath or brush my teeth. Each day I could only eat stale and hardened corn bread. I started a hunger strike. After three days, the police started to force-feed me. They ordered inmates to drag me executioner style for several tens of meters to the outside. They nearly broke my arms and my shoes fell off along the way. I was shoved to the ground at the gate where cold winds howled. One of the police cursed me saying, "I will stab you to death," and roughly shoved a plastic tube through my nostril. They injected a bowl of either diluted milk powder or corn cereal. Then they quickly pulled the plastic tube out causing severe pain to my nostril membrane. They did not have any sterilization equipment or necessary nursing care. Even the untrained inmates could administer force-feeding. Once, another Falun Gong practitioner in the same cell protested, "You can not treat me like this," while the inmates pushed him onto the ground and forcefully inserted the plastic tube. The policeman kicked him hard on his forehead with his leather boots. His forehead bled for a long time afterwards.

After more than two weeks of treatment I became extremely week. I did not have any strength and was barely able to breathe. Yet the police still forced me to sit on the hard board during the day. At night I was forced to sleep on the bare concrete floor, near the doorway, where there was a cold draft. I could not extend my legs or turn over.

(To be continued.)

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/1/30/66121.html

http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/2/20/45228p.html

By Gong Chengxi, a Dafa practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) Note: Dafa practitioner Gong Chengxi (male), aged 25, was a student in the department of administration management at China University of Political Science and Law. He was born in Wulumuqi City, Xinjiang. He was the president of the student union and a class monitor at the university. He was known to be honest and kind, and exhibited excellence in his conduct and academic achievements. He was expelled because he practices Falun Gong.

On January 22, 2001, a policewoman sentenced me to labor camp for one year without trial or the opportunity to present any defence. I asked her what legal basis she had for sentencing me. She hedged, saying, "Go check it yourself," so I refused to sign the verdict sentencing me to a labor camp.

The next morning, Changping detention center handcuffed me and four other Dafa practitioners and sent us in a police car to Beijing labor camp distribution center (near Tuanhe labor camp in Daxing district). When the car entered the gate, ten or twenty policemen stood in two lines, holding electric batons, and handcuffs. We were put between them. One policeman sternly ordered us to obey their every command: "Practitioners cannot lift their heads while standing and walking. They must lower their heads with both hands in front of their abdomens. Practitioners must cross their hands and clasp the back of their heads while squatting down (during roll call, waiting for meals, talking with the police, etc.). Practitioners must put their elbows inside their thighs and get their heads into their crotches. When in that position, they are not allowed to lift their heads. When the police call practitioners, they must shout, 'Hello captain,' and then squat like this in front of the policeman. If anyone resists 'transformation' he is shocked with an electric baton. Practitioners must walk perfectly straight and take small steps. If anyone resists even a little bit, the staff will shock, and beat you." After the men and women were separated, the staff force the practitioners to read the regulations and write a pledge promising, "not to practice or teach Falun Gong, not to go on a hunger strike, and not to injure themselves." Any practitioner who refuses to write this is shocked, and beaten. Then the practitioner's hand is held down firmly for them to write.

I was assigned to the second class of the second team. The police assigned one or two criminal inmates to each practitioner. We were not allowed to talk with each other and they monitored our activities. In the first few days, we were forced to do drills in formation in the winter cold, always standing several hours. We were required to shout insults during "Report" ("report" must be shouted before each meal, before answering a question that a policeman asks, while doing drills in formation, and before going to bed). We were forced to sing transform songs, and whenever we met a policeman, we were required to lift our head and shout, "Hello captain," and then lower our heads. After getting rice, using the restroom, or even being shocked by the police, we were forced to shout, "Thank you, captain." At night we were forced to learn the regulations by heart. If we did not pass this test, we were not allowed to sleep until midnight.

After several days, we were forced to work. The work was to wrap wooden chopsticks with a layer of paper. "Sterilized" was printed on the paper. In fact it was not hygienic at all. Detainees who had hepatitis, venereal disease, and other illnesses also had to work. None of us were ever asked to wash our hands before work. About 40 detainees were crowded in one room, and the chopsticks were piled up on the ground and on our beds. Hygiene was minimal. For example, every morning and night there was only a few minutes for detainees to use the restroom. Even when we didn't have use of any facilities to clean ourselves, we had to work. We were not allowed to have a shower until it was found that many detainees had lice. Then we were allowed to have a shower once, when several dozen detainees were squeezed into one bathroom with only two taps available. In the summer of 2002, an epidemic of hepatitis broke out in the distribution center.

The distribution center went crazy attempting to gain the greatest benefits from the detainees. Each person had to wrap from 7,500 to 10,000 chopsticks each day. It was nearly impossible to finish, even if we worked from 6 a.m. to 12 midnight. Not only did we have unendurable back pain, but the police and prisoners both abused and beat us. Every day was the same thing for over one month in the distribution center. Because their eyesight was poor, several older practitioners, Dao Wanhui, Yang Juhai, Li Xueliang, Chen Jingjian, Jia Lin etc couldn't finish their assignments no matter how fast they worked, so the captain forced them to work for many hours outdoors in the freezing cold. If they still couldn't finish, they would be deprived of sleep. Usually they were allowed to sleep only for three or four hours.

A policeman burned a practitioner's nipple with a cigarette stub. Xu Huaquan, who was a translator, and had a Masters degree, aged about 30, refused to do labor beyond his physical strength, so a captain named Zhou of the second team shocked him with three electric batons. After that he was tied to a bed for 24 hours. Captain Zhou ordered the inmates not to let him sleep, and to force him to write self-criticism. The prisoner who watched Xu Huaquan was specially permitted to eat in the small mess. Knowing he had the support of the captain, the prisoner openly abused and tortured Xu. In order keep Xu awake, the prisoner shot him in his eyes and face with rubber bands. When I questioned captain Zhou about why he didn't allow Xu to sleep, he told me that I was "opposing the government."

In the meantime, the distribution center tried to brainwash me. In February, with a large numbers of electric batons in hand, the distribution center forced hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners to watch video tapes slandering Falun Gong, and asked the practitioners to write their understanding. After the "Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation" was broadcast in CCTV's "Focus Interview," we were forced to watch it on TV every night. We were also forced to write our understanding about it.

On March 2001, I was sent from the Beijing labor camp distribution center to the second team of Beijing Tuanhe labor camp. The main task at Tuanhe labor camp is to transform Falun Gong practitioners, that is to use brainwashing, sleep deprivation, electric batons, beating, physical punishment, mental manipulation, and torture to force practitioners to give up their belief and write "four letters" to denounce Falun Gong and support the Party. They also videotaped practitioners when they were reading their transformation pledge. They artificially set Falun Gong up as opposing the Party.

They used their own false slander as the excuse to persecute Falun Gong. Under the instigation of policemen Jiang Wenlai, Ni Zhenxiong, Wang Hua and others, we practitioners suffered all kinds of torture because we refused to give up Falun Gong. Every day we were forced to sit in a baby chair for 18 hours, and were brainwashed savagely. We were not allowed to sleep until 2 a. m., although we had to get up before 6 a.m.. Sometimes we had to stay up all night for over ten days in a row. We only slept for at most half an hour at night, and usually couldn't sleep at night at all. As soon as we dozed off, the prisoner on duty woke us up. I lost so much weight that I looked like a mere skeleton and my spirit almost collapsed.

At the suggestion of the captain, the criminal inmates would go from one brainwashing session to another one in order to torture the practitioners who refused to give up cultivation. I was forced to squat for many days, for 18 hours in succession per day. I was not allowed to sit, get up or move, except for two or three times to go to the restroom, which had to be reported to the supervisory prisoner. They would not dare to do this if the police didn't instigate it, as it was against labor regulations.

After a few days I was in extreme pain. My feet swelled badly. I couldn't wear shoes and couldn't even walk. The police did not feel guilty at all. Instead, they even tortured me more. In the brainwashing session, several prisoners surrounded me and read materials slandering Falun Gong. I covered my ears and refused to listen to their lies. They held my arms and forced me to listen. One time they almost broke my fingers. When I tried to get out of their grasp, they savagely beat my face and head many times. They even beat me until my mouth was bleeding because I pointed out their lies. One prisoner caught hold of my head and slammed it against the wall. Another prisoner fiercely beat my lower jaw with his fist. This kind of violence, to force Falun Gong practitioner to accept brainwashing, happened all the time, but the policemen on duty never did anything about it.

The untransformed Falun Gong practitioners were forced to clean restrooms and the garbage of the building in which over 160 people lived. Policeman Ni Zhenxiong told us this was because we were "not transformed well." They were intent on transforming people from believing Zhen Shan Ren to betraying their beliefs, fellow practitioners and Teacher. If we resisted, they would torture us savagely.

Policeman Wang Hua from the second team often talked to me when he was on duty until 3:30 a.m., and I only slept one or two hours. With his connivance, the prisoners from the sixth session often punished me physically and threatened me right in front of him. In April 2001 I was transferred to the fifth class. A prisoner name Li vigorously assisted the police and forced me to stay up all night. He often beat me, slandered Falun Gong viciously in front of me to mentally disturb me, and cursed me for no reason. I reported to Wang Hua about it. Wang Hua instead instigated his own persecution. In May 2001 the second team made practitioners go for brainwashing sessions every day. It consisted of the police reading lies about Falun Gong. I refused to attend and went on hunger strike to protest. Wang Hua had me do heavy work even though I had no food the whole day, and wrote down that I resisted transformation. In June 2001 I was tied up for 24 hours during "group training." Wang Hua hinted to a prisoner to commit further violence against me. This prisoner told me about it later on.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2004/1/31/66122.html

http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/2/22/45357p.html

By Gong Chengxi, a practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) Note: Dafa practitioner Gong Chengxi (male), aged 25, was a student in the Department of Administration Management at China University of Political Science and Law. He was born in Wulumuqi City, Xinjiang. He was the president of the student union and a class monitor at the university. He was known to be honest and kind, and exhibited excellence in his conduct and academic achievements. He was expelled because he practices Falun Gong.

In April 2001, several foreign reporters were planning to visit the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp. The whole labor camp, from the top levels down to the lower levels, began their customary acts of deception, forcing practitioners of all groups to repeatedly watch those internally-produced video programs entitled, "60 Questions and Answers for the Foreign Reporters." They drilled practitioners, forcing them to be consistent in speaking these astonishing lies. For example, if asked whether the detainees here were verbally abused, beaten or physically abused, the answer must be "no." Practitioners were forbidden to say that the reason for their detention was for practicing Falun Gong; instead, they had to say that they were detained for "having interrupted the social order." If asked how the food was, the answer had to state the amount of flour, oil, meat and vegetables per person per month. All these mandatory replies were utter nonsense, to deceive foreigners. Besides, each practitioner who had not given up the practice was threatened not to "talk casually," or otherwise the practitioner would be held "responsible for the result."

Police officer Ni Zhenxiong threatened us during the meeting, "If the reporters ask questions, you are not allowed to say you are being beaten in the labor camp, let alone mentioning that there is such a place as the 'Dispatch Center'."

That day, a reporter went to the Third Team, located on the first floor of the east building. In fact, the Third Team had transferred dozens of those who did not give up Falun Gong and those who did not satisfy them, to quarters located north of the Intensive Training Team. What the reporters saw, therefore, was only a pre-arranged charade. Whenever there were visitors, the labor camp meal for that day would be upgraded. In addition, the routine, public physical torture of Falun Gong practitioners would be cancelled and replaced with a ball game. As soon as the visitors went out of the gate, the physical torture would resume.

The means that officials in the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp used to deceive the outsiders were infinite in number and were very despicable. For example, vast capital has been invested to improve the infrastructure of the labor camp in order to cover its crimes of trampling on the basic human rights of steadfast Falun Gong practitioners. To present their façade of "civilization," the labor camp officials recently put into practice a policy of "different treatment for different classes of detainees." They classified detainees into five categories. The highest category was even promised eggs and milk for breakfast, a meat dish, plus a vegetable dish for lunch. They might be workers, peasants or students on probation. They were also allowed to rest during the weekend. In fact, only a very few had this special treatment, although the numbers were greatly exaggerated by the official propaganda. Meanwhile, the practitioners who wouldn't give up Falun Dafa were all classified into the lowest category -- those who were strictly monitored. They were subjected to all manner of physical and psychological torment, including high-pressure brainwashing and night-long physical torture sessions. They were sent to the Intensive Training Team, locked up in small cells, tied up with ropes, given nothing to eat but corn flour buns, and forbidden to buy food or even daily necessities. However, the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp attempts to cover up these cruel torture methods behind the façade of their "new policies."

The locales of persecution -- "Intensive Training Team" and "Attack Building" -- were never open to the public. Visitors were never permitted to see any of the practitioners who dared to clarify the truth. Therefore, the official reports were based on sheer deception. For those who refused to give up Falun Gong, the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp is just a "hell on earth."

On May 27, 2001, to protest the savage brainwashing and the lengthy sleep deprivation, I went on a hunger strike again. Without any reaction or protection from the police, Ni Zhenxiong and Team Leader Zhao forcibly carried me to the Intensive Training Team.

The Intensive Training Team was a totally isolated, freestanding building. It was gloomy and horrible, and was specifically used to torture the firmly resolved Falun Gong practitioners. Without special authorization, this evil place did not even admit access to the labor camp police, let alone admit any reporters or visitors from the outside. More than a dozen common prisoners were on duty around the clock. The Falun Gong practitioners being detained were locked up like a caged animal, and were not allowed to talk to each other or have any kind of freedom. The day when I was locked up in the Intensive Training Team, a criminal named Li Daiyi who was arrested for prostitution violently scratched my private parts. This happened in front of Liu Jinbiao, leader of both the ITT and Security Team, as well as the chief of management section and Ren Baolin. This gross violation to my body hurt me to the extreme. However, Liu and Ren not only pretended to have seen nothing, but instead ordered the criminals to tie me tightly to a bed board for 24 hours with several ropes, and put me in a narrow and airless small cell. I was tied up for a month, though it was stipulated in the Temporary Labor Camp Regulations that continuous use of a torture instrument/method should not last longer than seven days. I was then locked in a small cell that was narrow and sweltering.

The cell was about 2 meters long (6 feet) and 1.5meters (5 feet) meter wide. No daylight entered. I was not allowed to wash up, let alone have a bath. Even when I needed to urinate, they only uncoiled the ropes from my upper body and let me sit up. I was tied up again right after urinating. At that time it was very hot. Not only did I suffer the pain from not being able to turn over, enduring the pressure on my internal organs, I also maintained my hunger strike, refusing to eat or drink water. I suffered from the deadly quiet and loneliness, and I had sores all over my body. The sores on my back and buttocks had started to ulcerate. Despite these conditions, every day I was roped like a criminal waiting for execution, and pulled out for force-feeding. A rubber tube was inserted through my nose into my stomach. Whenever the rubber tube touched the mucous membrane in my nose, I burst into tears because of the great pain. However, criminal Li Daiyi often viciously pulled the rubber tube from my stomach back and forth in front of the police. That made me vomit heavily and I almost suffocated. Five or six days later, one of my nostrils was seriously swollen, because the rubber tube had repeatedly irritated the mucous membrane.

Another Falun Gong practitioner, Wu Jun, who was also tied up, went on a hunger strike to protest the camp's illicit extension of his term by six months. Under the instigation of police officer Liu Jinbiao, prisoners Li Daiyi, Song Wanjun, Li Peng and others pulled Wu Jun out at 4:00 a.m. every morning. They tied his arms and dragged him, forcing him to run. Wu Jun refused and was beaten over his entire body until he was black and blue. When Wu Jun asked to have an examination in a hospital, Liu Jinbiao said publicly, "Your skin is so tender that any touch would make it bruise." With encouragement from the police, the criminal inmates often did not allow Wu Jun to go to the restroom. Li Peng tortured Mr. Wu, who was tied up on the board, with a method called "Na Ma," causing him to lose consciousness (in this torture, the nerves in the neck are squeezed for a long time, and soon one will go into a coma). Li Peng once derived great pleasure from slapping Wu Jun violently, making him suddenly fall to the floor. Wu Jun was continuously tied up for three months. He has been subjected to all this torture for refusing to write the "Guarantee Statement" to give up practicing Falun Dafa.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/2/1/66123.html

http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/3/1/45621p.html

By Gong Chengxi, a practitioner from Mainland China

(Clearwisdom.net) When Wu Jun and I were on hunger strike, a director from the management division of the Labor Education Bureau of Beijing came to inspect the labor camp. He angrily confronted me. Within two days, the Tuanhe Labor Camp and Dispatching Division started to force-feed us. On June 10, inmates carried me into a small room in the training brigade. A guard with the last name of Shen from the Dispatching Division and a strong inmate came to the room to force-feed me. The Assistant Director of the Tuanhe Labor Camp Zhuang Xuhong, guard Liu Jinbiao, prison doctor Xiao Zheng, five or six other guards, and several inmates (including Li Daiyi) were already in the room, standing around the bed. Several inmates lifted me up and held me down on the bed. They tightly tied me to the bed with a rope. Several people held my legs, arms, and chest. The prison doctor Xiao Zheng listened to my heart with a stethoscope and said, "He is fine." Then, somebody pinched my nose. The inmate from the dispatching division violently pressed on my cheeks with his fists to force me to open my mouth. Another person started to pry open my teeth. Amidst the acute and stifling pain, I felt a fluid fill my mouth. It was extremely painful. When a slit was pried open between my teeth, they immediately put a steel spoon between my teeth and started to pour fluid into my mouth. My mouth was filled. Because I struggled to breathe with my nose, the fluid went into my trachea. Since my nose was also pinched, I was suffocating and my mind was going blank. In the afternoon, guard Liu Jinbiao instructed inmates to force-feed me again in the courtyard. A guard from the education division came and videotaped the entire process of forced-feeding. After forced-feeding, my cheeks were swollen and injured for over a month.

Before and after the forced-feeding, I asked the director of the labor camp, Zhuang Xuhong, the following questions, "Why did they start forced-feeding me without discussing with me about the incident where people were beaten in the second brigade? Why didn't they allow practitioners to practice the Falun Gong exercises? Why did they adopt such brutal means for forced-feeding?" He said, "There is nothing to talk about. This is using 'the Party compassion' on you." He tried to force me to write a guarantee letter indicating that I would reject Falun Dafa. I refused. Two or three days later, general inmates Song Wanjun, Xu Zheng, Wang Zheng, and Huang Yingtao were sent by policeman Liu Jinbiao to watch me. They suddenly shut the door and windows. They started to curse Falun Gong for no reason in front of me. They wrote statements defaming Falun Gong on paper streamers and fastened the paper streamers to my body, including my buttocks. They abused me and tried to provoke me. They grabbed my hands, which were tied together, and tried to make me write the guarantee letter. I shouted, "No, no!" which irritated policeman Xu Jianhua in the "Intensive Training Unit". I asked him to stop the inmates from committing crimes. Xu said, "I don't know you. What do you want me for?" Actually, in the past, he had always been responsible for carrying out the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners. Then, Xu left. Song Wanjun and other inmates became even more violent. They started to write defamatory words on my body and my feet with a ballpoint pen. They stabbed the pen with force into my arches and the space between my thumb and index fingers. They smeared my fingers with fingerprinting ink, which could only be found in the police office, and forced me to press my fingerprints on the paper strips. They tormented me like this for hours. On the same day or the day after, inmate Zhang Jianlin was on duty. He started to verbally abuse me just after he entered the room. He slapped me hard on my cheeks, punched me in the chin, and twisted my head. In the next several days, he beat me every day. I was tied to a bed. Every time he abused me he would tear apart my pants and underwear and sexually abuse me. Because the weather was hot and I was not permitted to take a bath for a long time, after he tore apart my pants and underwear, the smell of my body attracted swarms of flies that crawled around my private areas. The inmates and guards saw what happened but showed no sympathy. When I was tortured on the bed, I was not allowed to buy regular food and other daily necessities and I was given only coarse bread and pickles, even though I had become very frail from the hunger strike and being tied to the bed. In addition, they often deprived me of sleep and forced me to listen to propaganda broadcasts that defamed Falun Gong.

September 4, 2001 was the tenth day I was taken to the confinement room and the day of punishment after three months of training. On that day, prison guard Liu Jinbiao asked me to write a "summary about the training." I wrote, "The fingerprinting ink and the stamp with the picture of Falun Gong's founder on it, which were used by inmate Song Wanjun to torture me, can only be found in the office of the prison police and the education division. How could a regular inmate obtain such 'forbidden goods'?" Liu Jinbiao immediately tore the "summary" apart after he read it. He shouted at me, "Damn you!"

From the end of July to the beginning of September 2001, I was detained in a metal cage in the training division. In the training division, three other Falun Gong practitioners and I were forced to sit on wooden planks holding our knees every day from morning to bedtime except for breaks for meals and going to the bathroom. Everyday, we were given food with little nutritional value that consisted of coarse bread, which was hard to swallow, pickles and a few boiled vegetables, and tap water. We were often dragged to the guards' office for brainwashing. We were forced to watch videotapes defaming Falun Gong, and they tried to make us write reports about our understanding of the brainwashing. We were frequently beaten or scolded for resisting their attempts to force us to renounce our belief, or threatened with violence. The pressure was immense. During the detention, I received a letter from my family. "Intensive Training Unit" guards Liu Jinbiao, Xu Jianhua, and Zhang Yijun not only opened the letter without my consent, they even threatened to read the letter in front of all the inmates. They often opened and inspected the letters of Falun Gong practitioners, and monitored phone conversations of Falun practitioners with their families. They treated Falun Gong books containing the teachings of Falun Gong principles, messages Falun Gong practitioners exchanged, and their diaries as "forbidden goods." Every few days, the guards from the security division would come to search for such things. If any were found, they would be confiscated as a light punishment. The heavy punishment included an extension of detention time, and being sent to the "Intensive Training Unit". On several occasions, when the guards came to conduct a body search, they tried to humiliate me by forcing me to take off my underwear in front of other people.

Guards Liu Jinbiao and Zhang Yijun often dragged me alone into their office to put pressure on me so that I would renounce my belief, and tried to force me to copy and write materials slandering Falun Gong. They threatened me, "We will fry you with electricity." One time, a guard with an electric baton in his hand forced us to stand under the burning sun for a long time without moving. I fainted and fell to the ground. The guard made fun of me and slandered Falun Gong. Inmate Li Daiyi poured water over my body. The guards constantly applied pressure on us and tried to force us to give up our beliefs so that they could fill their goal of forcing practitioners to renounce their belief and in return receive large cash rewards. Any guard who was successful in getting one Falun Gong practitioner to quit their practice of Falun Gong, would not only receive a special reward of about 1,000 yuan (almost one month's salary), but would also accumulate political capital for future promotion.

In the notoriously brutal Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp, it was very common that the police used regular inmates to help them abuse and persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Inmates were used to commit crimes or take actions that the police wanted but could not do openly because of their job and their fear of having to take responsibility for committing crimes. Any inmate who acted on the police' behalf was promised a premature release, a few months before their term ended. By contrast, if any Falun Gong practitioner practiced their exercises or even talked, the inmate on duty would be reprimanded, or even worse. For example, inmate Li Daiyi was sent to forced labor for three years for patronizing a brothel. Since he was sentenced to serve time in the forced labor camp, he had actively participated in brutally beating and torturing Falun Gong practitioners, used the cruelest methods to torture many Falun Gong practitioners; he had used ropes to tie numerous practitioners, and used a metal lock to hit Falun Gong practitioner Yang Shuqiang's head, beat and injured practitioner Liu Xingdu's chest, as well as used his knee to bruise my ribs. For such brutalities he was promoted from a class head to the brigade head in the "Intensive Training Unit", and was given many awards by the forced labor camp and the labor camp bureau. Finally, he was released with a half-year reduction in his sentence.

In July 2001, dozens of Falun Gong practitioners' valuables, which they had been required to hand over to the forced labor camp for safe keeping, were privately sold to make money for the authorities. The culprit was Training Division Captain Liu Jinbiao. We reported this incident to the deputy labor camp chief Zhuang Xuhong, who promised he would resolve it in a week. However, even when I left the labor camp on December 19, 2002, it was still not yet resolved.

From September to November 2001, I was constantly brainwashed in No. 5 and No. 7 Divisions. On November 4, 2001, Wei Rutan, Qin Wei and I, about six or seven people in all, were sent to a building in the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp, which is used solely to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their belief using any means. The building has six or seven rooms on the each floor. There was only one bed board placed on the floor in each room. We were separately detained in the rooms, put under tremendous pressure and subjected to forced brainwashing.

In order to completely destroy our faith, prevent us from seeing each other and create a high pressure and terrifying environment to completely deprive us of our freedom, the Education Section Head Wei and the responsible police used newspapers to block the windows of every door, didn't allow us to see each other, or to look outside. Even when using the toilet we had to go separately. We had to sit on small plastic child's chairs and were subjected to endless propaganda and lies. A police officer was there in the room for monitoring day and at night. We were forbidden from standing at will or walking around, not to mention leaving the room; nor was it allowed to have any private activities. When going to the bathroom for washing and to the toilet, there was a group of monitoring personnel following closely at every step. The bathroom and the washing room were installed with monitoring equipment. At night, there was a police and a prisoner in every room to watch us sleep.

Because the environment was so highly enclosed, there was no way for other prisoners in the labor camp and the outside world to know the actual situation. People from the outside who came to visit and interview certain people in the Tuanhe Labor Camp couldn't enter the "Intensive Training Unit" or the building where we were being detained. Brainwashing was only the method, the final goal of the forced labor camp, to force us to write the documents to give up the practice and actively defame our practice of Falun Gong. They also videotaped the process, in order to deceive other Falun Gong practitioners and the media inside and outside of China, to display their so-called "Educate, Transform, and Save" policy; to cover up the inside truth of the brutal persecution. When they discovered brainwashing didn't work, they didn't allow us to sleep, physically punished us, beat, and electrically shocked us.

Quite a few police officers used multiple high-voltage electric batons to shock Wei Rutan for a whole night and warned him not to tell other people. His stomach and back were full of injuries from the electric shocking. That day, Wei was forced to write a "transformation" statement against his will, and was forced to read it and while the police videotaped him. On the same day, Education Section Heads Jiang Haiquan and Wang Tingting, as well as No.2 Division Captain Liu Bing, entered my room and asked me what my thoughts were. I remained silent. Jiang Haiquan and Liu Bing twisted my arms, intended to write dirty words that slandered Falun Gong on my body. I didn't cooperate. Liu Bing then started to loudly verbally abuse me.

Another time, police Yue Qingjin slandered Falun Gong, and I refused to go along with him. He came up and used his arms to choke my neck tightly and dragged me backward, making it difficult for me to breathe. His attack injured me in several places.

On Dec. 16, 2001, practitioner Qin Wei's term had expired after the term was initially extended for half a year. A few days before that, Qin Wei suddenly disappeared. During that period late night, we often heard the sound of kicking, beating and cursing coming from upstairs. Around December 14, one prisoner who was responsible for watching him told me that a few police officers had ordered Qin Wei to write statements against his will. Qin Wei was under constant torment.

Labor camp police used a whole string of torture methods to assault people's minds and torment people's bodies, to force Falun Gong practitioners to write statements to renounce their belief and then videotape them while they were forced to write those statements, in order to brainwash more people, to deceive the public and the international community. In order to avoid leaving any evidence of their persecution, the police had been more and more covert in their methods. For example, before they would electrically shock a practitioner, they would tie him on a bed board and blindfold him, not allowing him to see the police officers who were torturing him, at the same time increasing the feeling of terror. They used cloth to gag his mouth; didn't allow him to make noise, so other people couldn't hear what was going on. It was forbidden to have any prisoners on the site and to intentionally shock practitioners' private parts.

December 19, 2001 was the day my unlawful forced labor term had expired. Around December 16, two police officers came to question me about some things relating to my situation. I kept silent. Police officer Yi asked me if I wanted to renounce my belief or not. I said "No." He used this as an excuse to torture me and to find "evidence" to extend my term.

In order to find excuses to extend my term, that evening police officer Liu Guoxi specifically organized a "group study" for me, he ordered us to read a propaganda book defaming Falun Gong. I refused to read it, and the study ended. Later, they used the excuse of "resisting education study" to extend my sentence by ten more months. All the people who were reading the book at that site were forced to make a statement of proof that I had refused the study and refused to renounce my belief.

All of the steadfast Falun Gong practitioners held in the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp were not released after their sentences expired. Each time practitioners' sentences expired, they were arbitrarily extended by the camp officials for at least half a year. In late May of 2002, the deputy director of Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp Li Aimin publicly announced in a general meeting to all detainees, "If you do not transform, you should not even think about leaving this forced labor camp!"

On the night of December 16, Liu Guoxi ordered me to attend a brainwashing session. About two or three hours later, chief Liao of the Education Section along with policeman Liu Bing came and handcuffed me. They then sent me to the "Intensive Training Unit" for brainwashing. There, I was brainwashed for three months.

During the night of December 19, 5 or 6 inmates lifted me and took me to the "Intensive Training Unit" office. The deputy chief of the 5^th Brigade and another policeman told me that my detention period had just been extended for another 10 months. Thus, I was psychologically traumatized once again. Their reasons for extending my detention period were: 1. Refusal to denounce Falun Gong, 2. My hunger strike to protest the persecution on May 27, 2001, and 3. Rejection of the fabricated materials on December 16, 2001. After reading the statement, the police asked for my signature. I refused to sign the document, and I did not utter a word. Chief Liu Jinbiao of the "Intensive Training Unit" and police Xu Jianhua then ordered the guards to detain me in a confinement cell. Upon entering the cell, I saw a few ropes on a bedboard. Liu Jinbiao intended to tie me up. I asked of him, "I have neither extreme opinions nor criminal intentions. Why do you want to tie me up?" Xu Jianhua then demanded, "Did you write the Guarantee Statement?" Suddenly, inmate Li Daiyi tripped me, pressed me down on the bedboard, and said to Liu Jinbiao, "It is not your business." Upon saying that, he tightly tied me to the bedboard in front of Liu Jinbiao and a few other inmates. Then, I was once again continously tied up at all times for the next two weeks. I was not allowed to purchase any food or necessities, so I could only eat steamed buns with pickles every day which provided little nutrition. Also, the guards only permitted me to use the toilet once a day. The inmates tied up my shoulders with two ropes, and one person pulled the ropes on each side. When I used the toilet, they would tie the two ropes to the water pipe in the room. This seriously insulted my personal dignity. All of these things were done to me based on the instuctions of the policemen of the "Intensive Training Unit".

Around December 23, 2001, when inmate Li Daiyi was tying me up again, he also forced me to kneel down. I was lying on the bedboard at the time, and it resulted in the injury of my right leg and the right part of my chest, both of which then hurt for nearly a month. I reported this matter to chief Jiang Haiquan and other policemen of the Education Section, but I received no response.

According to the regulations of the "Intensive Training Unit", we were allowed to purchase daily necessities such as toilet paper and additional food to provide some nutrition. However, the guards withheld this privilege from Falun Gong practitioners to make daily life unbearable for them, and to compel them to stop holding hunger strikes and to renounce the belief. All of our personal belongings and even our rights were arbitrarily taken away because we practiced Falun Gong.

After being detained in the "Intensive Training Unit" for three months, I was transferred to the 7^th brigade on March 15, 2002. This brigade is where the drug addicts are kept, and officials of the forced labor camp intentionally left me with those addicts as a means of isolation and to cause further hardship to me.

On August 27, 2002, I wrote a litigation statement and submitted it to Beijing Daxing District People's Court. In this I sued policeman Jiang Wenlai, Ni Zhenxiong and Wang Hua of Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp 2^nd brigade for their illegal treatment, including their use of sleep deprivation, their instigation of other inmates to verbally abuse and beat me and their own use of physical and verbal abuse against me between the dates of March 1, 2001 and May 27, 2001. The police of the 7^th brigade supposedly handed in the lawsuit statement for me, but I have never received a reply from a court regarding this letter.

On September 19, 2002, I saw, through the window of the 7^th brigade, 3^rd brigade policeman Liu Guoxi and others abuse three Falun Gong practitioners including Wei Rutan in the exercise yard at 6 a.m. Liu Guoxi ordered the practitioners to squat down, then stand up repeatedly for a long time, and he did not stop even when the practitioners were too tired to stand up. He forced the three practitioners to do push-ups endlessly in front of him, and he then made them to run laps around the exercise yard without rest until noon.

On September 23, I wrote once again on Liu Guoxi's actions and submitted a prosecution letter to the Tuanhe Procuratorate. I asked the police of the 7^th brigade to transfer it for me. A few days later, the police told me that they had already handed in my letter to the Administrative Section according to procedures. However, I have to this day received no response from the relevant department. Once in either late September or early October of 2002, a department head of the Bureau of Forced Labor Camp administrative office came to talk to me at the 7^th brigade. I told him about the criminal behaviors of Liu Guoxi, but he found many excuses to put off my urgent requests for justice.

I was detained for two years, and I suffered countless instances of mistreatment and torture. These mistreatment severely injured both my body and my spirit. While still in detention, I tried again to sue them for the acts of persecution they committed against me. On December 16 ,2002, I wrote three prosecution letters to the Supreme People's Procuratorate to report the criminal actions of the Beijing Forced Labor Camp Management Committee, the Beijing Reeducation Through Labor Personnel Dispatching Department and Beijing Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp against me, and I handed these letters to the deputy director of the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp Li Aimin according to the regulations of the forced labor camp. However, on December 19, 2002, before I was to be relased, the police confiscated my remaining prosecution letters, copies of my previous litigation statements and all of my personal litigation materials with the excuse of acting according to "the regulations of the forced labor camp." So far, I have received no response from any of the authorities to whom I sent my prosecution letters and litigation statements. However, they have also not retaliated against me for filing those lawsuits. In 2000, Falun Gong practitioner Li Chunyuan filed a case against Jiang in which Mr. Li stated that Jiang overrides the law by persecuting Falun Gong. Not long afterwards, he was arrested on December 28, 2000, and he was accused of "disturbing social order" and sentenced to one and a half years in a forced labor camp. In the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp, police abused him and detained him in the Intensive Training Unit's iron cage for at least half a year. He had to sit on a board in one posture from early morning to the evening, and he was not allowed to go out or to talk. Also, he could only eat stale and hard buns with pickles every day. Aside from placing him in prison, the authorities did not respond in any way to his prosecution letters or his litigation statements.

October 19, 2002 was the due date of the 10-month extension of my illegal detention. In the morning the police told me that they would release me that day. I waited until nightfall, when finally a police officer asked me to gather my belongings and wait in the captain's office. Soon, two police officers from the Security Team came and tied me to the chair. Zhang Fuchao then said to me, "Because you refuse to renounce Falun Gong, we have decided to extend your term for another two months and send you to the Intensive Training Unit right away." My heart sank when I heard the startling announcement. Zhang Fuchao did not even have any official notification of the extension, and forcibly dragged me toward the door. I protested loudly, "On what grounds are you extending my term?" To prevent others from hearing me, several police officers from the Security Team removed my glasses and gagged me with a rag. Then several police officers hauled me downstairs by my head and limbs to the Intensive Training Unit. As soon as we got there, someone put his arm around my neck and pulled me into a "Small Cell," which almost choked me to death. Once inside the "Small Cell," I was tightly fixed to a bed board that they had prepared in advance.

Five days later, I went on a hunger strike and was force-fed with a tube forcefully inserted. [The purpose of force-feeding is never to nourish, but rather to punish practitioners and to cause so much pain that they will renounce Falun Gong practice. It is the number one cause of deaths of Falun Gong practitioners.] Once again I was subjected to the excruciating pain for protesting the persecution. During my hunger strike, the deputy director of Beijing Labor Education Bureau Dai Jianhai, and the deputy director of Tuanhe Labor Camp Li Aimin came to inspect the small cells. When they passed my cell, I shouted, "Why did you extend my term illegally?" They did not respond.

Another time the director of Tuanhe Labor Camp Zhang Jingsheng came to the small cell. I asked him why the labor camp tortured Falun Gong practitioners. He said blatantly, "There's no torture." During the four months I spent in Team Seven, I witnessed almost daily that the policemen Liu Guoxi, Bai Zhongyin and others from Brigade Three, as well as Education Section Chief Yang Jinpeng, policemen Zhang and Yang Bin from Brigade Five brutally tortured practitioners who refused to be transformed. For instance, they forced practitioners to run laps for several hours non-stop, and then for half a day again in the afternoon or next day. As a result, many practitioners were exhausted and could hardly move.

On national holidays, when other detainees were taking a break, policeman Yang Bin from Brigade Five still forced practitioners Wang Fangpu and Liu Litao to run laps in the pouring rain. He also forced determined practitioners to "stand in the military posture." He deliberately forced them to stand in the grassy area in the summer evenings, where there were lots of mosquitoes and other insects, and not allowing them to move at all. They had to stand for at least one hour at a time. In the drill ground, he also forced them to kneel down on one knee, and not allowing them to get up for long periods of time or change knees. He also forced practitioners to put their hands behind their backs, and walk laps in the exercise yard while in a squatting position. Sometimes he also humiliated them by forcing them to "squat down and get up" hundreds of times non-stop.

On the morning of August 15, 2002, during morning exercise, policeman Liu Guoxi slapped a practitioner in his face, struck and kicked him to the ground in front of several hundred detainees. Director Zhang Jingsheng witnessed the brutality but did nothing. They often deprived practitioners of sleep. It was not uncommon for practitioners not to be allowed to sleep for over 10 days. They also shocked practitioners with high-voltage electric batons. The police usually dragged practitioners to a place where there was no one around, gagged them, tied them up and placed them on a bed. Then the police would shock them with several electric batons simultaneously.

On December 5, 2002, while interrogating me, a policeman from the administrative division told me in a harsh tone, "Don't even think about leaving the labor camp without being transformed."

On November 28, 2003, the Party Secretary of Beijing Politics and Law University Feng Shiyong and others came to Tuanhe Labor Camp trying to deliver the "thorough transformation as precondition" for the resumption of my study when my term in the labor camp was up. In early 2003, the university announced that I was expelled.

On December 19, 2002, Tuanhe Labor Camp temporarily released me. However, before my release, the "610 Office" notified my school, my local police station, and my family to come to the labor camp and jointly signed an agreement stipulating that they disallow me to continue my practice, and implement strict surveillance on me.

Around the Chinese New Year of 2003, I learned from my family that my school had expelled me from school since I refused to give up my cultivation practice. They also sent my residence card back to my hometown in Xinjiang Province. As a determined practitioner who refused to be transformed, and who did not have a school to bail me out should I be arrested, I could be subjected to the authorities' various persecutory measures that would take away my personal liberty, including brainwashing or worse. Recently I learned that the Beijing police had delivered an order to the local police in Xingjiang, asking them to collect information about me, keep track of me and prepare to arrest me and sentence me to prison.

On December 19, 2002, just before my release, the "610 Office" forced my father to sign an illegal document agreeing that if I continued practice, my family would be implicated. That night, the section chief of the administration division and a policeman from the "Intensive Training Unit", leaders from the students' association and security department of my school, as well as the school district police escorted my father and me to a train bound for my hometown. The section chief asked the police on the train to monitor me along the way. The district police questioned my father and also recorded contact information of my local police and our home phone. After I returned home, the police called my home immediately, frightening my parents badly.

The surveillance and hounding of Falun Gong practitioners is pervasive and reaches every corner of China. Although at present I am out of the labor camp, at any moment a warrant could be issued for my arrest, and once again I would be subjected to persecution.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/2/2/66124.html

Posting date: 8/31/2004
Original article date: 8/30/2004
Category: Eyewitness Accounts
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/8/15/81772.html

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